amanda_lou 's review for:

One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle

3.0

---

Oh boy. I know how hard it is to lose a parent — both in fact. How confusing grief is, how unmoored one feels. And the idea of getting to meet my mom back in her 20s, before she was a mom, when she was all potential, is incredibly appealing— I wonder if we’d like each other and be friends? I think she might have been too wild for me… anyway, I love the premise of this book, but it failed hard for me in the performance. The protagonist Katy was so self-indulgent, so clueless, so unaware of her own privilege, so spoiled and so cruel in her selfishness, that I could not empathize with her, her situation, or any aspect of her character. Mostly I kept reading because I wanted to hear more about Positano.

Also — Lauren Graham read the audio book and just goes to AGAIN prove that someone can be a fine tv actress but be no good at narrating audio books. Why do editors/producers do this??? Ugh. No character differentiation, a bland read. Maybe the read also had to do with my dislike of Katy.